Adult education, also called continuing education, any form of learning undertaken by or provided for mature men and women. In a 1970 report, the National Institute of Adult Education (England and Wales) defined adult education as “any kind of education for people who are old enough to work, vote, fight and marry and who have completed the cycle of continuous education, [if any] commenced in childhood.” Adult education comprehends such diverse modes as independent study consciously pursued with or without the aid of libraries; broadcast programs or correspondence courses; group discussion and other “mutual aid” learning in study circles, colloquia, seminars or workshops, and residential conferences or meetings; and full- or part-time study in classes or courses in which the lecturer, teacher, or tutor has a formal leading role.

An adult education course run by Project Literacy, a program of the Free Public Library in …

Charles A. Meyer/UNESCO

Types of adult education

Types of adult education can be classified as follows:

1. Education for vocational, technical, and professional competence. (Such education may aim at preparing an adult for a first job or for a new job, or it may aim at keeping him up to date on new developments in his occupation or profession.)

2. Education for health, welfare, and family living. (Such education includes all kinds of education in health, family relations, consumer buying, planned parenthood, hygiene, child care, and the like.)

3. Education for civic, political, and community competence. (Such education includes all kinds of education relating to government, community development, public and international affairs, voting and political participation, and so forth.)

4. Education for “self-fulfillment.” (Such education embraces all kinds of liberal education programs: education in music, the arts, dance, theatre, literature, arts and crafts, whether brief or long-term. These programs aim primarily at learning for the sake of learning rather than at achieving the aims included in the other categories.)

5. Remedial education: fundamental and literacy education. (Such education is obviously a prerequisite for all other kinds of adult education and thus, as a category, stands somewhat apart from the other types of adult education.)

In reference to the fifth category, adults frequently need to compensate for inadequacies of earlier education. If these inadequacies are not remedied, they inhibit recourse to modes of education that are “adult”—adult, that is, in terms of sophistication in modern society and not in terms of age. Such remedial education is required most extensively in societies changing rapidly from a subsistence to an industrial economy and concurrently changing politically and socially. Mass literacy acquires a new importance in these nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and the establishment of universal primary education becomes a social imperative. To prevent a “generation gap” in reading skills and education while an effective school system is being created for the young, governments must attempt to provide parallel facilities for adults. Even in countries with mature systems of childhood education, however, opportunities for higher or even sometimes secondary education are unequal among various regional, occupational, and social groups. Hence there are adult programs for completing high school or preparing for examinations normally taken at the end of secondary school.

An adult education program of the Works Progress Administration, c. 1930s.

Adult-education agencies and institutions

Any classification of agencies and institutions involved in adult education must necessarily be arbitrary, given the great variety found not only among nations but within single nations. The following are the general types.

The folk high schools, first established in Denmark and now found in all Scandinavian countries, are residential schools in which young adults who have completed formal schooling and usually have had some subsequent work experience pursue at least several months of study. The study aims at furthering both moral and intellectual development and instilling an understanding of local and national traditions and conditions. Although at first they were independent or separate institutions, they are now frequently promoted or supported by communal boards of education. Although rarely exported with success in their pure form, the folk high schools have influenced the development of residential forms of adult education in countries as diverse as Canada, Kenya, India, and The Netherlands.

Nonresident adult-education centres, which are the most widely distributed specialized institutes for adult education, are represented by such organizations as “workers’ academies” in Finland, “people’s high schools” in Germany and Austria, “adult education centres” in Great Britain, and “people’s universities” in The Netherlands, Italy, and Switzerland. The distinguishing characteristics of these institutions are that they are independent of the general education authorities, at least in terms of programming; that student attendance is voluntary and part-time; and that teachers and administrators are either volunteers or professionals offering mainly part-time services. Traditionally these schools do not prepare students for examinations or offer training in advanced vocational skills. Typically the curriculum includes instruction in practical and domestic crafts, fine arts, music and drama, familial and social problem solving, and modern languages, as well as instruction designed to reinforce primary and secondary education.

Agricultural extension services, though almost wholly an American development, are conducted on a scale great enough to rate separate mention. The extension service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducts agricultural, home economics, and even public affairs programs in every county in the United States. It has had special significance in developing “demonstration” as a method of adult education and in emphasizing the adoption of new farming practices.

The open university, a recent British institution, is significant for its new dimension and sharp break with previous degree programs for adults. In some educationally advanced countries—such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United States—adults have long had opportunities to pursue part-time education leading to university degrees, but these programs have usually been carbon copies of programs offered to regular undergraduates. The open university, in theory at least, aspires to a kind of universal higher education. It is intended to serve only mature or older adults studying part-time; it has no standardized entry requirements; and it attempts to combine various educational technologies and techniques—correspondence instruction, mass-communication media, personal counseling, and short-term residential courses.

Commercial enterprises have provided correspondence courses or class instruction (part- or full-time) for adults who are usually seeking some form of vocational qualification (but who may, however, be simply seeking “self-improvement,” as in speed-reading programs). Such schools may be licensed or supervised by state agencies (as in Sweden and The Netherlands), or they may be self-policing through associations offering accreditation. Some schools are nonprofit organizations.

Extension services include both public-school programs for adults and the university extensions mentioned earlier. The school programs are administered by the public-school systems, and they are popularly termed night schools because ordinarily they are housed in the same school buildings used in the daytime for school-age youth and also because some of the same teachers are often involved. (Much of the teaching, however, is also done by subject specialists not employed as schoolteachers.) Though often originating in efforts to remedy or supplement inadequate childhood education, many of these programs now cater to the same range of interests served by the “nonresident adult-education centres” cited previously. They often retain elements of vocational preparation at a less specialized level, generally for younger adults—for example, in commercial and trade skills.

The extension services offered by institutions of higher learning are of two broad types. The British tradition, influential in most Commonwealth countries and former colonial territories, has emphasized the provision of noncredit courses of “liberal” studies. The North American tradition, found in countries influenced by the United States and Canada, places a larger emphasis on credit programs duplicating courses offered to regular undergraduates; such programs are offered via television or correspondence or in separate urban colleges. Both traditions seem in the process of modification—the British in the direction of offering more credit-earning and vocation-related refresher courses, the North American toward a wider acceptance of the provision of general liberal studies for the public at large and for specialized vocational groups. It is everywhere apparent that universities are assuming more responsibility for the continuance and renewal of education for the highly educated.

In addition to the various schools or services listed above, there are countless organizations whose main purposes may not be adult education but that offer some kind of instruction or leisure-time activities for adults. They include such bodies as the Young Men’s Christian Association, the Young Women’s Christian Association, political parties and labour unions, women’s organizations, and temperance organizations. Other agencies for which adult education is a related rather than a primary function are libraries, museums, botanical gardens, and the like. Not only do these agencies provide the means of individual self-education but also they frequently promote group activities or put their accommodations and resources at the disposal of adult-education agencies. Finally there should be mentioned the advisory and instructional services offered by various social and welfare agencies in the fields of health, safety, marital guidance, family planning, and so forth.

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Voluntary learning undertaken in organized courses by mature men and women is called adult education. Adult students come to this learning from all walks of life. Such education is offered, among other broad reasons, to enable people to enlarge and interpret their experience as adults. The specific reasons for undertaking such learning are many: adults may want to study something missed in earlier schooling, acquire new skills or job training, find out about new technological developments, seek better self-understanding, or develop new talents and skills. This kind of education may be pursued with guidance on an individual basis through the use of libraries, correspondence courses, or broadcast media. It may also be acquired collectively in schools and colleges, study groups, seminars, workshops, clubs, and professional associations.

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